A private branch exchange (PBX) environment brings together many forms of communication including but not limited to: telephony conversations, voice or phone mail, electronic mail (E-Mail), and facsimile messages. However, presently, to retrieve voice mail messages and other forms of PBX communications, you have to access the system to determine if any messages have been received. For many users, this is deficient because messages, which can be urgent, may be received much earlier than they are retrieved. Further, since communication options are segregated, the user must separately check pagers, dial into and check the voice mail system, log on to E-Mail, and check the FAX server to determine whether the message has been received.
Individually, paging systems and PBX environments suffer many disadvantages. For example, many pagers suffer the ability to discriminate between urgent and non-urgent calls. To indicate the urgency of a page today, many people utilize an agreed upon prearranged code. Illustrating this scenario, a page sender and a page receiver may agree that three digits after the telephone number to be entered during a page will be used for a prearranged code. In one example of a prearranged code, "111" could be used to represent a business emergency, "222" could be used to represent a business non-emergency, "333" could be used to represent a personal emergency, and "444" could be used to represent a personal non-emergency. Therefore, in the event of a business emergency, the page sender would know to page the page receiver and enter "111" after her phone number to indicate that there was a business emergency. The "111" would be displayed on the pager LCD and the page receiver would compare this code with his list and determine that this is a business emergency. This method is deficient because it requires that the code be prearranged and either written down or memorized.
One way pagers, i.e., pagers without a display, assume one origination and you must call to obtain the urgency of the message. With these pagers, a tone or vibration occurs when there is a message, however, without calling you have no idea of the urgency of the message. This is unsatisfactory for many users who do not wish to remove themselves from an important situation, e.g., a business meeting, to call the page sender only to find out that the message was unimportant.
Additionally, page systems do not identify the person you are trying to page. Therefore, a page sender may not target the correct recipient of a page due to dialing a wrong pager telephone number or to a pager number change. Further, the page sander would be unaware that the intended page receiver never received the page. This is deficient for many page system users, especially users who frequently transmit and receive urgent messages.
Many pagers are restricted to a local zone. This makes the pagers ineffective when the page receiver is out of town. While paging systems are available that expand the paging zone, they are very expensive and they are not integrated into a PBX environment.
PBXs are used as in-house telephone switching systems that electronically or optically interconnect one telephone extension to another, as well as to the outside telephone network. Further, PBXs are known to perform various telephone management functions, such as least cost routing for outside calls, call forwarding, conference calling, call accounting, as well as integrating voice mail systems, E-Mail systems, and facsimile machines. However, heretofore, PBX environments have had disadvantages associated therewith. For example, a sender of an E-Mail message, a voice mail message or a facsimile has no way of knowing if and when the intended receiver will be notified of the incoming message of facsimile if the recipient is not located at or near his computer, telephone, or facsimile machine. This is deficient for many users who work in an environment where urgent E-Mail, voice mail, and facsimile messages are transmitted and received.
Illustrating the above deficiency, a user transmits an E-Mail or voice mail message to a group of ten scheduled attendants to inform them that the important meeting scheduled for 3:00 has been changed to 2:00. However, if the scheduled attendants are away from their computers or telephones, it is possible that they will not be notified of the received message in time. Therefore, they could arrive late or miss the meeting. Thus, present PBX system are incomplete for many users, especially users in corporate settings.
Therefore, it is desirable to merge a paging system and all forms of office and message communications into one system which can be customized, and selectively notify or display the message to the user, regardless of his location.